Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Mid-strength misleads

I’ve seen a couple of drinks products recently described as “mid-strength”, such as this new version of Magners. Now, I would have thought “mid-strength” was somewhere between the strength of ordinary cooking beers and strong premium ones, say around 4.5% ABV. But in fact these products are only half the strength of normal drinks, and are if anything mid-way to zero alcohol. Surely they should be described as “lower alcohol” or even, being honest, “piss-weak”, rather than the misleading “mid-strength”. Presumably the thinking is that they don’t want to deter men who wouldn’t be seen dead drinking anything “weak” – but are consumers really that gullible?